At 90 kilometres long, Stuart Lake is one of the largest natural lakes in British Columbia. Kristen Cooper swam it in nine days.
Cooper swam the length of Stuart Lake and camping along the way while towing her supplies and gear, all while documenting the experience on Instagram.
“It was amazing, probably the first three days I felt like I don’t want this to end, and then I had some tough days, and I thought maybe it’ll be good if this comes to a close,” she said. “When I finished yesterday (Sunday), I thought, ‘oh, I don’t want to be done, I want to keep going,’ it was just awesome.”
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Cooper has lived in Fort St. James, nestled on the eastern shore of Stuart Lake, for about 16 years now.
“The lake is just awesome, and I’m someone who just loves water,” she said. “I’m not actually a trained swimmer in any way, I’ve never been in swim clubs or done anything like that, I just sort of like to be in water, and it’s sort of developed from there.”
She said the thought of swimming the lake came to her about five or six years ago.
“I thought it would be really cool to just swim the whole thing some day, but it didn’t seem like an attainable goal,” she said. “Back then I was only swimming like one or two kilometres at a time and it slowly increased and last year was the first time I did 10ks and I thought, maybe I’m close to my goal, so yeah, this year I thought I’m just going to go for it, I’m going to try and get it done and see so much of the lake while I’m doing it and just kind of be a part of everything while I’m out there and camping.”
She said on day four of the trip, she had to swim 12.4 kilometres, which was a long stretch while pulling her gear.
“I’d only swum over ten kilometres once before in my life, so this kind of a big swim for me,” she explained. “The boat is not easy to pull, so it takes a bit more effort than just swimming 12k on your own without it, and then after that I had like three days in a row that were almost ten or ten-plus kilometres, and that became really tough.”
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Cooper said there were also times where she would have to do multiple long crossings, which were also tough because she couldn’t take as many breaks.
In terms of gear to pull in the boat, she said there’s a wide range of gear she’s brought with her.
“A big portion of that is food, because you can imagine, you burn a lot of calories swimming” she said. “Also the lake is cold so you’re using up a lot just staying warm, then I’ve got my camp stove, my tent, my sleeping bag and mattress, my clothes, my stuff to keep me warm.”
Not everything in the pack is for survival.
“I have a novel to read, and my journal, I like to journal when I do my trips, and paint, paint some pictures and write about my trips,” she said.
“I kept it light, but not as light as if I was backpacking.”
One thing Cooper said surprised her about the journey was how much distance she could cover in a day.
“You could sometimes just see the point that you came from that day, but it was amazing,” she said. “I think day four I got my first sighting of Mount Pope from way up the lake, that was the first time it came into view and I was like ‘wow, it looks so far away,’ and I knew in four days I would be swimming past it.”
She was also amazed it only took her nine days to swim the whole lake.
“I think the other for me was just how much I loved being out there,” Cooper said. “This was the longest camping trip I’ve ever done and the longest solo expedition I’ve ever done, I just loved the solitude and I loved being out there.”
Cooper has been doing other shorter solo trips in the area, the longest of which was a six-day kayak trip to the end of the lake and back.
“My very first actually solo trip was a swim camping trip, and I swam from the mainland to two-and-a-half kilometres out to an island, actually one of the islands I camped on on this trip, and I stayed there for two nights and I swam back,” she said. “It was kind of neat to pass by that island, because I had done two-and-a-half kilometres that very first time and it seemed like such a big deal and it was so tough back then, and I had just swum ten kilometres that day to the same island, so it was kind of a neat thing to see how far I’ve come in three years.”
Cooper’ said her love of the outdoors started when she was pregnant with her daughter.
“I started to get just two hours here and there to just go and explore, and I was looking at animal tracks in the winter and just sort of getting comfortable with the outdoors and I think it sort of grew from there,” she said. “As a kid I grew up, we didn’t have TV or anything like that, so we played outside quite a bit. I think maybe in the last four years, I’ve gotten divorced and so I’ve had a bit more time to do some stuff that I haven’t had a chance to do before, so I’ve been really enjoying exploring the area and getting that opportunity to do it solo, which for me is really nice.”
Cooper said there are currently no plans for another trip anytime soon, but she’s always thinking about it.
“I have dreamed about doing a Takla to town trip at some point, but I’m not sure yet if that will happen,” she said. “So we’ll see.”
Cooper is still in the process of putting out the videos of her trip. You can check out the journey on her Instagram page here.
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